Understanding Order Statuses

What We'll Cover

The fulfillment process involves first recognizing what stage in the timeline a particular order is in. Is it a newly paid order ready to be picked from the warehouse? Or perhaps it's been pulled from the warehouse and packaged, and is waiting to be picked up by a shipping provider. BigCommerce has built-in order statuses that represent the different stages of the fulfillment process.

Order Statuses

Order statuses cannot be renamed, created, deleted or have a default specified. All new orders that have been paid for will have a status of "Awaiting Fulfillment" (physical products) or "Completed" (downloadable products), but this can vary based on the payment gateway and method used.

Pre-orders (which can also be used for backorders) use the same statuses listed here to represent if the order is pending, awaiting payment, or awaiting fulfillment. You can access your pre-orders from the View Orders screen.

If an order is partially refunded, the status will be updated to Refunded. There is no "partially refunded" status.

Pending — customer started the checkout process, but did not complete it. Incomplete orders are assigned a "Pending" status, and can be found under the More tab in the View Orders screen.

Awaiting Payment — customer has completed checkout process, but payment has yet to be confirmed. Authorize only transactions that are not yet captured have this status.

Awaiting Fulfillment — customer has completed the checkout process and payment has been confirmed

Awaiting Shipment — order has been pulled and packaged, and is awaiting collection from a shipping provider

Awaiting Pickup — order has been pulled, and is awaiting customer pickup from a seller-specified location

Partially Shipped — only some items in the order have been shipped, due to some products being pre-order only or other reasons

Completed — order has been shipped/picked up, and receipt is confirmed; client has paid for their digital product and their file(s) are available for download

Shipped — order has been shipped, but receipt has not been confirmed; seller has used the Ship Items action. A listing of all orders with a "Shipped" status can be found under the More tab of the View Orders screen.

Cancelled — seller has cancelled an order, due to a stock inconsistency or other reasons. Stock levels will automatically update depending on your Inventory Settings.

Declined — seller has marked the order as declined for lack of manual payment, or other reasons

Refunded — seller has used the Refund action. A listing of all orders with a "Refunded" status can be found under the More tab of the View Orders screen.

Verification Required — order on hold while some aspect (e.g. tax-exempt documentation) needs to be manually confirmed. Orders with this status must be updated manually. Capturing funds or other order actions will not automatically update the status of an order marked Verification Required.

Changing an Order Status

Some order statuses are applied when a particular control panel action is performed. For example, shipping items will change the order's status to Shipped.

Other order statuses need to be manually applied. For example, orders must be manually changed to have a Cancelled or Declined status — they are not triggered by store user or customer actions.

To manually change an order status, select it from the Order Status dropdown on Orders › View Orders.

Updates to an order's status — whether triggered by the store, or performed manually — will prompt an email message detailing the status change to the customer. Your store's checkout settings control which statuses trigger a customer notification email.

Order Status Workflow

Below is an example of an order status workflow to provide insight on how statuses may be used in the fulfillment process. Every business is unique, and the best practices for one may not be ideal for another. Experiment with your own workflow and see what best works for you.

2. Checking your orders screen, you see you have a new order with a status of Awaiting Fulfillment, which indicates the order is paid and ready for you to pull.

3. You package the order and purchase the appropriate shipping label. You take the package to a shipping provider, or schedule a pickup. In either case, you manually update the status to Awaiting Shipment, which indicates the order is ready to leave your point of origin.

4. Once in the hands of the shipping provider, you go to your store's View Orders screen, and use the Ship Items action on the order, which updates the order status to Shipped, indicating it has left its point of origin.

5. Optionally, you could confirm receipt by the customer — via tracking number or other methods — then manually update the order status to Complete.